Archive for “Bootstrap Your Business”

Newt: “One strategy is for businesses to simply re-purpose existing content materials such as meetings, workshops, and teleseminars and to use them in their newsletters, blogs, or white papers.

Also, I personally use online sources such as Google Alerts and Alltop.com to help keep me up to date and to generate ideas for content.To use Google Alerts, visit www.google.com/alertsand set an alert for keywords relevant to your industry.Google will then email you links to information on the web that may be relevant.This is helpful for brainstorming topics for your content.Alltop.com is similar.However, it gathers good blog based content on all topics.For example, I visit www.contentmarketing.alltop.com to keep me up to date with my industry on the web.”

Thanks so much for joining us for Part 1, on Thursday we’ll hear more from Newt Barrett and take a look at a case study showcasing techniques from the book. Sign up for the RSS feed to make sure you receive Part 2.

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According to the Domain Name Industry Brief by VeriSign, 24 million new domain names were added in 2008. A 16% increase over 2007’s numbers. In case you haven’t noticed, the web is getting crowded. Just imagine 24 million more websites out there all competing for a click-thru on Google. So how do you stand out [...]

Instead of waiting around, Andrew Field, founder and president of PrintingForLess.com, and an award-winning entrepreneur, created his own economic stimulus plan for small businesses and sent it to U.S. Senator Max Baucus, chair of the Senate Finance Committee. Senator Baucus took note, and now, Andrew’s idea is spreading across the nation. It was featured on [...]

As 2009 gets under way it’s painfully obvious that the economy is still struggling. Sales are continuing their downward trend, unemployment is rising, and many Americans are still having trouble paying their mortgage. After struggling through 2008, the average consumer is facing the New Year at a financial rock bottom. The best indicator of this [...]

As the old saying goes, “Time is Money.” Big retailers such as Gap, Limited Brands, Office Depot, Toys R Us, and the Meijer grocery chain are all jumping on this bandwagon as they try to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the upcoming weak holiday shopping season. (Read more here from the WSJ, [...]

Interesting article in the NYTimes: Leave it to the Germans to combine livestock with lodging. In the last decade, hundreds of farms throughout Germany have transformed old barns and potato warehouses into heuhotels, or hay hotels, where guests spend the night on a bed of dried grass. The eco-friendly hotels (no sheets to change) are [...]

I’m sorry it’s been so long since I last wrote. The last few weeks have been filled with market turmoil and internal growth struggles. As the Presidential race heats up it appears as though the markets will take their time recovering. The crash of ‘08 will be felt for a long time. Frankly, I have [...]

Angel investors have become more cautious in light of the recent economic uncertainty, trying to reduce their risk exposure by including more angels in each deal, according to the Angel Market Analysis for the first and second quarters of 2008 released by the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire. According to [...]

With the non-stop news reports of Wallstreet’s record losses, the rising unemployment rate, and the dismal forecasts for holiday spending, it’s easy to become paralyzed with fear of the unknown. While there may be several factors effecting the economy and markets today that are out of our control, there are plenty of things that we [...]

Like all of us…… I like to pass on information that can help entrepreneurs. I found this site that gives great resources on business funding. Check out www.netpreneur.org and look under the funding section. From angels to VC’s, it’s all here. Funding is that ugly word most entrepreneurs do not want to hear, or have [...]

I just returned from the ABC Kids Expo in Vegas this past week. The show is a children’s industry tradeshow that connects children’s manufacturers with buyers from specialty boutiques, department stores, and chains. Buyer traffic was down as the case with most shows; however, I couldn’t help but notice a reoccurring theme throughout the five [...]

In several of the interviews that I’ve done, one of the frequent topics that comes up as an aside, is Money now vs. Money later. Many business owners are torn between the product or service offering money quickly and the development or infrastructure efforts that take short-term money but offer long-term reward. This creates an immediate [...]

On a recent appearance on The Big Idea with Donny, I was one of three people on a panel. It was our role to help people fed into the show via satellite and phone. It’s a huge challenge to be in the hot seat and be ready to fire away with valuable advice. But it’s [...]

For those of you who run a business or are trying to get one off the ground, I bet you’ve had a run-in or two with a crisis of some kind. It may have taken the shape of a loss of data, or a short-fall in needed cash. Perhaps it was a lawsuit or a [...]

More from Suzy Batiz, StartupNation community success story. She made over $1 million in first year revenue for her Poo-Pourri product line. Read what Suzy shares below in Part 4 of her advice to fellow entrepreneurs who want to break a new product onto the market. In Suzy’s words: How can you grow without an [...]

As I indicated in Part 1 of this series of blog entries, Suzy Batiz, founder of Poo-Pourri, shared her advice, further proving what a true shining star she is, right here, living and working among us in the StartupNation community. What a role model! Below Suzy provides more of her advice. In Suzy Batiz’s Words: COVER YOUR [...]

&nbsp;Even with the most disciplined cost control and effective collection of money your business can run short of cash.&nbsp; As a matter of fact, this is a fairly constant situation when you are growing your business. To provide the capital to launch and grow three businesses over the past twenty years, two of them after [...]

According to the 2006 Angel Market Analysis released today by the Center for Venture Research at the University of New Hampshire, the angel investor market experienced steady growth in 2006, with total investments of $25.6 billion, an increase of 10.8 percent over 2005. This is an irrefutable statement about the fact that the money is [...]

Catch 22. You have a terrific idea for a profitable small business. You need some startup cash to get it rolling. Or maybe you’ve started your business and an influx of cash will take it to the next level. Problem is, you haven’t been in business 2 years yet so banks aren’t likely to give [...]

One of the most popular questions we get at StartupNation is about start up business financing: how to raise money to start a small business. We even have an entertaining and instructive exercise on StartupNation Radio called the elevator pitch where an entrepreneur pretends she is in an elevator for a 60 second ride with [...]